Why did the Neanderthals disappear?

Humans probably killed them off because they looked different and did not want them to compete for food and land.
This was the real first world war.

they were really, really bad at hide and seek

the "eater of the dead" title in my profile refers to michael crichtons book by the same name

if you have any interest in this topic, you must read the book, plain and simple

coincidentally, I'm a redhead, so the title seems more appropriate this week with the announcement

link to external source

Some Neanderthals were red-heads
Ancient DNA contains clues about complexion.

Heidi Ledford


Pale complexions may have evolved many times over.Digital VisionAn analysis of 50,000-year-old Neanderthal DNA suggests that at least some of the ancient hominids probably had pale skin and red hair.

The findings, published this week in Science 1, are based on the sequence of a single gene, called mc1r . Humans with a less functional form of the MC1R protein are more likely to be fair skinned — an adaptation that may have helped inhabitants of high latitudes synthesize vitamin D more efficiently in limited sunlight.

what's amazing is how people are misinterpreting this to mean red heads are decendants of neandertals





[edit on 28-10-2007 by syrinx high priest]

reply to post by mojo4sale


I think the Neanderthals has the satiety of killing each other. They killed off each other eventually till not one is left anymore. They can't interbreed with homo sapiens because they don't belong to the human race.

Neanderthals not human ancestors

I think they were smart enough not to develop agriculture and be slaves to the first of them who owned more land.
www.harpers.org...

For most of human history, we lived by gathering or killing a broad variety of nature's offerings. Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question, especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished, more disease-ridden and deformed, than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. Farming did not improve most lives. The evidence that best points to the answer, I think, lies in the difference between early agricultural villages and their pre-agricultural counterparts—the presence not just of grain but of granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since

Interestingly enough, i just posted something regarding the Neanderthals.

anyway, i have reason to believe that they were not wiped out be "humans", but they were in fact merged with the Homo Sapians.

www.esconi.org...

there was this find as well as one in Portugal which shows traits of both a modern human as well as those of a Neanderthal.


now to get one thing strait, unless it has been said already: Neanderthals had bigger brain volume, however they had a larger portion that was orientated to the sensory and instinctive aspects, compared to ours which is mainly towards the aspects of invention (to put it simply, they were more animal that modern humans, focusing on survival more. this is not to say that they were stupid cave men, which they weren't, just that "they had bigger brains" is all to often taken the wrong way).

it was a situation, when Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe, where they could either kill each other, or breed with each other. now i dont think that there was as much (if any) discrimination towards them as there is today (towards other races, not the Neanderthals ) and i think that the idea of survival was far more important instinctively so they bread.


so the Neanderthals didn't actually go anywhere, they are somewhat added to our composure. maybe that is why Homo Sapien (Neanderthalis)'s were so successful surviving later on. they would have merged the aspects of each other, the Neanderthal's tool making survival techniques alongside the Sapien's inventive brain.

[edit on 28-10-2007 by funny_pom]

I think it is possible that they were wiped out by disease. The contacts of races that lived in isolation for a long time - and modern humans came from Africa while neanderthals lived in Europe - historically often resulted in epidemies. For example the Indians in America - vast majority of them was not killed by whites directly, but by diseases to which they were not immune.

So it is possible that when Homo sapiens sapiens came from Africa to Europe, they brought new diseases with them and the Neanderthals were not immune, so they were died out.
What do you think about this theory?

ETA: To the interbreeding teory (that Neanderthals didn't die out, but they were assimilated) - I don't think it is true. Had it been true we would have to find evidence of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens Sapiens LIVING TOGETHER (in the same group) as we all know man and woman must sleep together in order to have a child. Has someone found some Neanderthal skeletons mixed with human ones from the same time period? I don't think I heard about such case.

[edit on 28-10-2007 by longbow]

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
The findings, published this week in Science 1, are based on the sequence of a single gene, called mc1r . Humans with a less functional form of the MC1R protein are more likely to be fair skinned — an adaptation that may have helped inhabitants of high latitudes synthesize vitamin D more efficiently in limited sunlight.

Right on, yea when I was born I was a redhead. To this day I still grow red facial hair and have red highlights in my light brown hair.

And likewise I came from a VERY high latitude area.. Scandinavia/British Isles.

On the subject of Neanderthals, it was always my quiet thought that .. maybe the early humans and the neanderthals did have some limited cross-breeding, and maybe some did get pregnant and give birth to part-neanderthal humans. I wonder if the dna got thinned out over the generatons to the point now where you can't even find it, the neanderthal dna within a human.

Also, neanderthals are an ideal candidate for the ancient astronaut theory. Clearly here is a humanoid primitive that, when spliced with part alien DNA, could result in a being that would be much like we humans are today. How do I know this? Common sense. Hairy neanderthal + Hairless alien (assumption) = only hair in some places! like humans.

I am not necessarily a believer of ancient astronaut creation theory, but I acknowledge it has a possibility of truth.

Heres the weird part. Humans supposedly evolved from a pre-Human, humanoid ancestoral being out of Africa right? So where did the Neanderthal race evolve from? Obviously they'd have to evolve from a Humanoid ape like creature just as we did, and those all started in Africa according to our evidence. This would pretty much mean that .. Neanderthals would've needed to migrate up out of East Africa, into the Mid east, and eventually Europe where the last interactions with modern humans occurred. Unless they spontaineously formed in Europe .. which I dont think could be true considering that they'd need humanoid-ape precursor ancestors to evolve from locally in Europe, which didnt have any such population 30k+ years ago.

[edit on 10/28/2007 by runetang]

Having received my Bahelors in '85 with aminor in Athro- This new theory that Neanderthal went extinct seems ludicous. When biology calls we reproduce. Horse's with Donkeys= Mule, look at all the variation in Canines. Neanderthals lives in our DNA. Consider the human variation. This is not all adaptation.
Why is inconceiveable that human life 'simulatiously ' around the World- meteor dust containing DNA or a microscopic life form that was blown around the earth(life started by a freak of nature or hand of God- irrelevant)
Frankly I find this claim as ridiculous as Pluto's not a planet. Neanderthal is within our line somewhere, and probalby populated the northern Hemisphere while Cromagnum was coming up in the southern. I don't think we have developed technologically enough to count out any similar beings from our evolution- and certainly not Neanderthal.
Let's be real- there would be no judgement regarding 'interspecies' mating at that point- It was like the Bar after 2:00
The only reason we keep debating it is that some people are uncomfortable with the fact that we are merely highly adaptable animals- And they don't want everyone to know we took the ugly girl/guy home.
So whats wrong with Pluto- don't like 9 Planets?
Science makes as 'definitve' staements as Religion- then have to retract them later. If neanderthal is not a link- where is his line, who else is not in ours, how many links have we lost now- and where did they come from & go to?A.Apithicus Africanus (Lucy),Hominides, Homo hobolus,.. i think the juries still out. My adage- If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck - it's probably some form of duck.

if one would reflect on the Biblical story of "Esau and Jacob"
or the story of "Cain and Abel"


and suppose the story was really telling about the two races of men,
the Neanderthals=Esau ... the Homo-Sapiens=Jacob

then one would find an answer abour the ?disappearance?

That branch of the family of Men did not become extinct or disappear they just relinquished the 'Alpha Male' or dominant role in the heirarchy of
anthropology ...mythed into the 'birthright' by the oral tradition in prehistory & passed down to those who later recorded words.

it my position that recessive genes are the one of the remnants of what's left of the Neanderthals' line of men, after they and cro-magnons were assimilated into the robust modern human family.

call my views pseudo science, or heretical to the established science models of mankinds ascension...but right or wrong that's where i stand...

thanks

[edit on 28-10-2007 by St Udio]

reply to post by purple girl


Your take seems to fit very well, IMO. Having watched nature for many years, I can assure you that the sex drive is not species bound in many instances. It can even be noted in species as different as dogs and cats.

Again we return to the "disgust" some /many people feel towards the idea as a reason the scientific community has shied away from this. Even for most scientific minds, the "animalness" of the Neanderthal is a stumbling block that bars them from being considered true people.

However, it seems logically evident that Neanderthal and Modern Man were either separate species that took a similar evolutionary path, or the same species in distinctly separate points along that path.

Now it would bolster the idea of intelligent life forming "often", given the right environment, if the two turned out to have come from a separate origin. This in turn speaks volumes for the possibility of life being widespread across the Universe. Even to the idea that intelligent life would seek the erect, bipedal form.

If it is the other road, where the same species had a significant portion take a giant leap forward past their kin, we are left with a great deal of speculation on how this occurred so swiftly, as Modern Man appeared almost overnight, anthropologically speaking. What was the "spark" that pushed one portion of the population to accelerate in such a manner beyond the skill and understanding level of another portion.

Now I realize that in the latter scenario many will be inclined to point out that humans took the Industrial Revolution as a major stepping stone upward at a time when there were humans living on earth in an almost stone age existence. But this idea falls apart for two good reasons.

While Modern Man was embracing the Machine Age and another portion was living as Bushmen, there was no distinct divergence in body form as there was between the Neanderthal and Modern Humans. And at any point, a Bushman could be taught the skills of the Modern Age, provided he were started early enough in his life to be in a learning phase.

So we are left with a mystery. Either "something" caused a fundamental change in both the body type and thought process of a portion of one line of what has led to modern humans, or two separate lines arose. But if two separate lines, then we have the additional question of where did this overnight wonder that is modern man come from, for there is no evidence of a separate ancestor line.

Originally posted by mojo4sale
From a conspiracy angle though, it is only recently that scientists have begun to compare Neanderthal man favorably with Homo Sapiens. Is this because we were attempting to prove that we were evolutionarily better than other species previously. Is there something that academia would prefer to remain hidden?

Yes to the first, no to the second.

Early on, the field was dominated by wealthy white men who could afford the education. Mostly British (the first archaeological and anthropological schools were in Europe), they held several theories at the time which said that human civilization reached its peak in Europe and that the more primitive the people, the closer to 'monkeys' they were.

(this paradigm was so prevalent that one anthropologist (Alfred Radcliffe-Brown) who was born to a working class family added a second last name so he appeared to be born of an influential family and therefore had a better chance of getting his papers published and was more influential in the field than the son of a working class family would have been.) He became quite famous, by the way, developing the theory of Structural Functionalism.

The "cavemen were stupid" paradigm really held a firm grip on thinking until just recently. It still shows up in illustrations of pre-homo sapiens hominids, where in order to make them look primitive, everyone has bad haircuts, bad teeth, and walks around naked. In truth, they could have cut their hair and combed it and have worn body paint (as many primitive tribes do) and leaves (ditto) and other plant material.

We don't have evidence, but they could have.

Old thought changes slowly. It changes more quickly in academic circles because it's forced to change quickly. It trickles down more slowly to the encyclopedias and associated books, and eventually... maybe... to school text books.

By the time it ends up in the hands of filmmakers, most of us want to go take a nice Moustrian hammer and whack said filmmaker a few times in the head and make him or her sit down and listen to what the real facts are and what they mean.

Originally posted by purple girl
Having received my Bahelors in '85 with aminor in Athro- This new theory that Neanderthal went extinct seems ludicous. When biology calls we reproduce. Horse's with Donkeys= Mule, look at all the variation in Canines. Neanderthals lives in our DNA.

But not according to recent studies of Neanderthal DNA.
news.bbc.co.uk...

www.archaeology.org...

Neanderthal is within our line somewhere, and probalby populated the northern Hemisphere while Cromagnum was coming up in the southern.

Err... "Cro magnon" was a culture and not a species and they were full homo sapiens. Neanderthal was not widely spread in the northern hemisphere, and the only known material appears in Europe (and not as far north as Scandanavia and west Asia.

H sapiens and H erectus were more globally spread.

Also remember that at the time, Sapiens was not the only human species other than Neanderthal. We also had Heidelbergensis and Eregaster (and Floresiensis), both of which overlap some or all of the Neanderthal timeline.
en.wikipedia.org...

The Neanderthal timeline is extremely brief -- much shorter than any other of the human types. Sapiens doesn't really arise until the very end of the Neanderthal time period.

And they don't want everyone to know we took the ugly girl/guy home.

There's some forensic evidence of cross species mating between Neanderthal and Sapiens, actually but no evidence that the offspring continued to breed.

Since your degree was several decades ago, you might like to catch up with what we've been doing in the field since then. The Wikipedia article is a nice summary of what we know from anthropology and paleontology and I can recommend it ( en.wikipedia.org... ).

Sometime after you took your degree, they also developed species timeline tools such as cladagrams and of course they continued to uncover new material every year.

Check out some of the blogs for new stuff:
www.anthroblogs.org...

www.sciam.com...

Originally posted by UK Wizard
I've heard a few reasons as to why the Neanderthals died out, one idea I've heard was that they were primarily built for ambushing prey in forests or slow moving targets like mammoths, their heavy set body and large frame helped them in this method of hunting but with the reduction of forests in Europe and thus development of more open environments they weren't physically able to adapt, where as homo-sapian's were.

I think we saw the same special. The way Neander's hunted was up close and personal as evidence by the Spears they used and many broken bones they suffered. They hunted big game up close. When the climate changed, the animals did too, however Neaders weren't "built" to hunt other ways. While strong and with stamina, they could not put forth bursts of speed necessary to catch prey in more open conditions. Their spears were designed for thrusting not throwing.

It was a combination of Genetics, climate change (different Animals) and hunting style and failure to adapt that hunting style to the new conditions on the ground that did the race in most probably.

I don't thing Homo sapiens did them in, in fact they probably prolonged their reign by working together with the Neanders for awhile. It would be interesting to see if the two groups intermingled and mated.

Perhaps "modern" humans were just more ruthless. The neanderthals, as a result of their social desires, attempted to befriend modern man only to be stabbed in the back and wiped from the planet over time?

Thanks for the post Mojo, as always, it is excellent. You have given me yet another topic to research.



Thanks!
Jasn

Originally posted by St Udio
if one would reflect on the Biblical story of "Esau and Jacob"
or the story of "Cain and Abel"


and suppose the story was really telling about the two races of men,
the Neanderthals=Esau ... the Homo-Sapiens=Jacob

then one would find an answer about the ?disappearance?

A fairly good analogy, yes (the ancient Jews didn't know about Neanderthals, but as a parable it's reasonably sound.)

it my position that recessive genes are the one of the remnants of what's left of the Neanderthals' line of men, after they and cro-magnons were assimilated into the robust modern human family.

They had a much older common ancestor, but recent analysis shows that they weren't successful breeders with h.sapiens. Cro Magnon is actually goodole H. Sap and not a species. It's a group of modern humans associated with a set of artifacts found in the "Cro-Magnon" rock shelter, at Les Eyzies, France.

Because Homo Sapiens killed them all off, humans are to egoistic to realize their bloodthirstiness and try to find other reasons for the downfall of the Neanderthal man, but the truth shall set us free, won't it?

I think the answer to what became of the Neandertals is obvious. H Sapiens will kill groups within his own species for such silly things as skin color, tribal affiliation, religion, etc...Just imagine when we encountered a species that was clearly not human! What did we do with them? We hunted them and ate them since they were good sources of meat in a cold climate and we had killed off most of the other large animals living there such as the mammoth. As we all know, cannibalism is a common tradition among the indigineous humans; it was certainly the rule 100,000 years ago. Pass the BBQ sauce

Originally posted by funny_pom
there was this find as well as one in Portugal which shows traits of both a modern human as well as those of a Neanderthal.

The one in Portugal is the Lapedo child, and judging by the looks of some of my fellow countrymen I think that the Neanderthals still live in Portugal.

Originally posted by runetang
Common sense. Hairy neanderthal + Hairless alien (assumption) = only hair in some places! like humans.

Humans have hair all over their body, especially if they are Portuguese, you should see some of the specimens we have.

They didn't adapt. Sure they were quite advanced, but they got stuck at some point and stopped adapting and getting smarter.

Because they started listening to Hip-Hop and smoking weed.

Unless I missed reading it in other posts the reason for their extinction was that they were not nomadic as Homo Sapiens were. At one point in our history we almost became extinct too with fewer than 10,000 of us on the planet, but we migrated south with the herds from the encroaching ice age and they didn’t.